Epaulettes Flying, Khadi Swaying

In January 2012 his interest in the newspapers had suddenly increased. In fact for the last few months he was keeping a close watch on some news related to the army commander-in-chief and the government concerning the date of birth controversy. He had retired as honorary captain from the army. During his service days there were so many occasions when he felt the top army brass could have acted like a professional defense unit, but many a decision had sounded completely politically correct. In the deepest of his secret self, he had condemned the decorated officers above the rank of colonel as the perfect politicians in army uniforms. He was first hand witness to blatant corruption in the safe and lucrative army corridors of procurement and supplies. There were so many internal, safe corruption-worthy lanes and by-lanes in the army cantonments, without accountability and check-balances by anything and anybody from outside, that he had suspicions many a time that the political leaders, who survived on short-cuts on laws and jurisprudence at each step, deliberately allowed these coffer-bursting corruption cases in the army, a sort of mutual agreement that we won’t interfere on your militarized version of making a bit extra money, unless you never ruffle the epaulettes come whatever may, however wrong things might get at the civilian front.  

So the patriotic Indian Army rarely showed concerns when it came to the things going bad at the civilian front, whatever the misery levels, and rightly so because India is a democracy and military interference in civilian affairs might very well lead to the dictatorial overtures. Thus all of us agree that India being the world’s largest democracy has to authorise total civil, democratic control over the army. He had always concluded that the political leadership never spoke against any type of tip-offs regarding the corruption in the army as a bargain for the army not being interested in anything civilian-type wrong doing. But of late there were some political news emanating even from the politically sterile high offices in the army brass. India had an extra-assertive army chief, General V.K. Singh whose enthusiasm in managing his soldiers seemed to step on the toes of the political leadership. Unavoidably there was this odd clash between the civilian leaders and the army chief. 

The retired honorary captain’s long-expectant heart went for a leap as the ‘age controversy’ aggravated and hogged media highlight during the chilly winters in Delhi. There was a mismatch in the General’s date of birth. The Government wanted the suitable date that would mean the General getting retirement earlier than what he claimed on the basis of his more suitable birth date. There were rumours that the General might be sacked; there were equally strong rumours that the General might even put some unorthodox pressure unheard of from an Indian army boss. He was pitching for the General, raising lots of argumentative support for the mighty, baritone-voiced General in that he will teach the politicians a lesson. The General would not backtrack on his claims; the Government seemed all eager to sack him. In the middle of January there were flash-lighting rumours that army columns had moved a bit more proudly to Delhi as a token of support for their boss. It raised many interpretations and raised still more eyebrows. With ecstatic gesticulations he was vouching for their authenticity, stressing that he knew from a creditable source. 

To a set of retired civilian non-believers he was trying his level best to make them understand that the spineless UPA government was trying its best to play down the issue of the military units suddenly moving to Delhi on 16-17 January. As we all remember it was the time when General V.K. Singh filed a petition in the Supreme Court regarding his age controversy. Anything could have happened. The ex-soldier claimed, a lesser soldier, like most of his predecessors (semi-politician men of arms), would have been easily cowed down by the Defense Ministry. But the corrupt horde is against a real soldier this time, he raised a verbal tirade of support for the General. Without any risk to his pension now, he even declared prophetically, ‘It has been an irony in this country that the Indian defense forces have sacrificed so much across the volatile borders, meanwhile the larger enemies got ingrained almost legally within the constitutional machinery of the state and raped public confidence.’

Like any other soldier or the civilian he agreed that the way things were allowed to go astray during the UPA misrule, it was no surprise that the Civil Society took the battle march against the enemies of the state. Like the common man’s peril of reading too much into common things and being totally ignorant of the real issues, he had his version of the causes of the controversy. He linked it to the civil revolts against the government: 

How long can you expect that the armymen will continue to shed blood for the enemy outside while leaving a free ground for the goons in khadi to plunder mother India. Whatever that has happened during General V.K. Singh's term as the Indian military chief cannot be confined within strictly the date of birth controversy. It is a symbol of larger meanings. We can logically surmise that the Indian army has started to understand the extent of harm done by the civilian government. For too long the Indian army was pampered exclusively in an abstract zone: a zone where corruption, nepotism and all the corrupt versions of civilian political scoundrelship were freely allowed to thrive by the Defense Ministry. Meanwhile it was stage-managed that the posts above Colonel were made more or less political in nature. These above-Colonel semi-politician-semi-military men acquiesced all the mucking game going inside and outside the army's domain. Then came General V.K. Singh! He understood the definition of the state enemy in its appropriate dimensions, i.e., both outside and inside the state. So all the problems started with this understanding only. I think it’s a healthy precedent that one of the mighty constituents of the Indian State is asserting its place as a counterpoise to other wings of the state. The theoretical fools of democracy may give more task to their tongues by forecasting PAKISTAN LIKE army takeover in future, but it at least should send a clear signal to the corrupt civilian government that it can no longer take the support of army for granted like before. As far as the General in concerned, he has a lot to offer as a true Indian in his civilian innings after May 31, 2012. God Bless Him!

Well, the post-retirement General did offer his services to the Anna movement and as coming times would tell, he even got a political reward for all his hardships during the UPA government. He is serving mother India as a soldier politician now.

A Fistful of Goodness

For one-and-half years life seemed to invigorate his retired self with a new meaning. He had retired couple of years back from the admin department of the university college. He had no family and had beaten the pangs of loneliness with the belief that he will have a larger role to play in life. As a father he fed the stray cows, dogs and beggars, and spent a major portion of his salary in it. It was a hard conviction that he is changing many lives for the better. This handful of a purpose—a bit larger than the common householders’ motives and responsibilities in life—had kept him going. Robust, pink and tall he exuberated confidence and as a member of some NGOs—whose other members misused funds—he did his best to follow the pious, socially relevant tasks mentioned in the statue and memorandum of understanding of the organisation. But now he was feeling life was just passing him by and took himself to be a failure, not even able to accomplish what many householders did while taking the responsibilities of raising children. And he had all the time to himself and hence should have done more important things in life.

He still saw almost half of his pension money go into what he considered to be the bigger causes, the bigger responsibilities when you shower your love, affection, care and money not on your own children but on those who are related to you just as fellow human beings as per the principles of humanism. He wanted his deeds to be recognised but it did not work out apart from some pictures of charity functions in the Hindi City supplements of the local newspapers and it was never sufficient; these not-so-important highlights in the not-so-important pages of the newspaper supplements. He had to justify his decision to stay unmarried by taking on a bigger responsibility. For decades he had tried to come on the centerstage of social reform by attending Arya Samaj meetings, for years he had tried to bring national level social change through the NGOs he was associated with, for decades he had spent a major portion of his salary in feeding cows, dogs and beggars. It had kept him going, but it had not fetched him recognition as such. So in his sixties now and the rope of life rapidly slipping across his palms, he was desperate to stop the slippage and hold it tight to climb to a spottable appreciation-worthy height. It was not being selfish; it was the simple innocent desire of a better-than-the-common-householders human being.    

Then this time period (July 2011 to November 2012) took his rapidly dispiriting self in its eventful folds. There were flashes of noteworthy history. Like so many others he rushed headlong into the effulgent stream to contribute to the common man’s cause and carve out his slice of history. His father was a strong cadre man of the Zamindaar League of Ch. Chhotu Ram during the British period. Anti-congressism was a legacy he had inherited. In tea stall debates he ripped apart the grand old party’s misrule, put down any voice to the contrary with his pinpointing examples. These were but rubbing salt to his injuries as the UPA 2 set unprecedented levels of misadministration and unaccountability. To make the fire brighter he had jumped headlong into the Anna movement for Jan Lokpal Bill to weed out corruption from the posts ranging from the peons to the Prime Minister. He formed a local Janchetna Morcha to make people aware of the great Anna’s mission. Looking at hundreds of thousands thronging the Ramleela Ground during Anna’s fortnight-long fast, he even started to believe that things in India will change so drastically that it will be considered a second liberation movement in independent India. But then there is a saying that Congress is Hathi Ghaash, a grassy weed that survives all your onslaughts till you burn and bury even the ashes. So the more he would use his money in ferrying more people to the fasting site, the more he spoke in small local meetings, the more he distributed the copies of the proposed Lok Pal Bill, the faster grew the Congress. The grand old ruling party was temporarily on the back foot while so many modern revolutionaries pitched battles against it to free the common man from corruption, nepotism, cronyism and what not. But once the ageing and worn out social worker took juice to end his fast, the Congress made a quick recovery to cover up the cleared patches.

Much to his chagrin, by the end of the year the Congress appeared to have derailed Anna movement to a great extent. The old hag of a party, he often cursed. The party and its handlers were too clever, witty and stubborn to be outsmarted by the social worker. Anna's movement had jolted it, to begin with. It was a social movement, a mass movement. Blatant corruption and nepotism had left massive holes in the pockets and dreams of the poorest of the poor and big scars on the conscience of the well-to-do middle and upper middle class of India. Fortunately these literal scars were equal, if not bigger, to the real scars of the poor masses, the aam admi who gave the Honourable Italian-born iron lady a decade to wield all powers without any responsibilities.

While the Congress slowly punctured the wind out of the storm, he was trying helplessly to pump enthusiasm in the movement’s sagging spirits at a community hall meeting in his city:

And what did they do? The ruling government...They have just redefined the contours of coalition politics in almost criminal manner. Shared interest policy has become just a policy of blindfolding the conscience and constitutionality to allow the allies and cronies to amass as much wealth as possible. They are just eyeing the successful completion of a full term. But at what cost? Who paid the cost? We did it man! We the struggling and toiling masses of India, silently and law-abidingly continued to add to our struggle to match the horribly rising monthly budgets. On the other end of the tunnel, our political akaas just stashed the money of our labour in Swiss accounts. It is an open secret. All of us know what is going on. But what can a bread-earning bunch of frustrated souls do. It can just grumble. And we just grumbled till Anna Sahib gave a voice to our harmless ineffective bickerings. Lo! Stay united like the sinewy tributaries that merged to form a tidal wave at Ramleela ground. It literally submerged the wrong-handlers of our well-meant parliamentary democracy.

But Congress is Congress my dears! The bigger noise at the Ramleela Ground and the smaller storms like his apart, it will just stick to its ways. At any cost! Under public bombardment, the Congressites dodged, feigned nonchalance, pretended even concern; but all along the way they were up to a smart plan to change a mass social movement to a political one so that it loses its savioural social identity to become a big political gimmick like its own. They knew that they can outsmart any group on the political platform. So poor Anna was systematically dragged into the political arena where the fight was not going to be one-sided like earlier. There would be punches from the both sides. Anna was fighting on a holy pedestal where even the semi-goons workers of the Congress were afraid to take direct or indirect pot-shots. Now they had dragged him into a muddy field. The same familiar game. Anna sahib was up for something new now! Good luck!

As the year changed and the winter gave in to the spring, his meetings would attract just dozens and even the great Anna himself had reasons to feel disheartened on account of the smaller numbers at the next chosen venues. The sharp edge of typical tricky Congressite political wit had punctured the high-flying balloon of his ideology.

He knew the movement was now tottering to head lurchingly in any direction that would save it from falling. He put his best foot forward to invigorate it like he had shouted anti-emergency slogans and had been slapped hard by a policeman.

In the middle of February 2012 the great Anna fell ill leading to much speculation and theories. He grabbed his anguished version of the story, wrote it with terrible anger. It was like the Britishers torturing Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote his opinion and tried to get it published but all refused this apolitically ranting rabid talk. Disgusted and considering himself to be a revolutionary he got pamphlets published and put these wherever his strength allowed him to.

Either it is stage-managed or happened due to the natural causes, but Anna sahib's suddenly aggravated health problems mean that the possibility of Civil Society leaving some dent on the prospects of certain political parties, largely Congress, are ruled out for the time being. Mind you, it is the same great old man who braved the heat and humidity during the North Indian summers for 13 days and still came out hale and hearty and in high spirits to promise to undo Congress' interests in assembly elections across India. The sudden deterioration in his health, and some sceptical talk of intentional wrong diagnosis and treatment, force a habitual cribber like me to inculcate some concerns about the human hand in all this. So while the sleaze and swindlery unfold in the UP elections, the Civil Society lies sidelined in hospital. The Yuvraj and the Queen have glamorized the gloomy scenario prevailing across the underdeveloped regions of the state where masses have been strategically kept in the same age-old poverty clutches so that they can just see as much as it is planned to show, majorly at the time of elections. Salman Khursheed talks of Muslim job reservation; Diggy Raja also takes jibes at anything smelling of Hinduism....This is communalism at its worst. Ironically, communalism in this country has come to be defined just as any insecure voice for the interests of the majority. While anything said and done to garner minority sympathy, and thus garner votes, becomes ineligible under the clauses of ‘communalism’ to stand out as an act of piety perfumed with all genuineness and goodwill. Mind you, under the objective clauses of the definition of 'communalism', Congress may qualify as the worst communal political outfit in the country. Its pro-Muslim outpours are forcing the Hindu consciousness to be tilted towards the BJP almost by default. Coming back to Anna Saheb and Civil Society, whether his health problems are natural or man-made, it is at least an opportunity for the movement to keep away from the political mud. He possesses the moral force and needs to invigorate it far away from the mucking political cauldron. Wish him good health! If the great man recovers to be capable of keeping fasts--his major force--then we can just hope for bigger movements. We should not forget, a morally clean and hospitalized Anna is far more effective in the long term than the semi-politicized version of the great man throwing mud-lumps at semi-goon politicians and getting smeared himself as well. He earned mass following through sheer moral force and integrity at all levels. He has done penance for it. It is a lofty pedestal. His penance will further take him vertically above and enlarge the aura behind the icon. He need not get into a hand-to-hand scuffle with the plunderers of this country. From his lofty moral throne he can breed energetic gangs of conscious citizens who will turn his vision into reality. Let us just pray for his coming back to health and regain the control of Civil Society movement.

During the days he would wander around the places where he thought the people must have definitely read the piece of reality. He met people who greeted him out of sympathy for being an active loner, while he looked deep into their eyes to trace any glint of the light born of his revolutionary article. People but just seemed busy in their dusty fights on a day-to-day basis and within weeks even the last of his pamphlets at the safest place on his own gate was gone, some street urchin whom he must have fed sweetmeats sometimes tore it out just to be more playful.

Not much bothered about the Anna effect, in March the Prince was furtively rallying the poor and destitute in Uttar Pradesh. For a moment it became probable that the poor Indians will once again rally blindfolded behind his regal aura. And for good reasons! After all we have been such nice, gentle, almost non-challenging followers for the last millennium. ‘The results in Uttar Pradesh, however, might show some light at the end of tunnel,’ his social-reforming spirit could now just survive as anti-congress jibes at the fag end of the dissipating storm. ‘The mute masses in India are now slowly rising to their own feet to chart out their own courses. These might be the struggling initial steps like toddlers, but will surely translate into calculated, purposeful and independent walks to well-set destinations. The democracy in India may come to age after the hopeless six decades since Independence,’ he ineffectually told the tea stall gathering who seemed more eager to fart, sip tea and smoke bidis.

Agendaless he stayed at home and cursed the mass apathy. Assembly election campaigning was at its peak in Uttar Pradesh. On the television he agonisingly watched the Yuvraj (as he called Rahul Gandhi, the mightily beneficent Brahmin, to put one another definition bestowed writhing in pain and anger) blessing huts after huts of the poor Dalits! ‘Poor people but understand the politics behind it. So they won’t faint of delirium and ecstasy at the touch of his rich slippers on their mud floors. For too long they have rallied behind the clarion call of the Panja (the Congress 'hand' as they call it). Surprisingly, they called the hand as 'panja', i.e., the claw. “It will hold the rich and upper castes by throat and make their lives better”, they digested their horrible tales in free India with this optimistic thought for six decades. Now but they realize that this is in fact the hand that has been spanking their bums, making them dance to the hopeless winds from all directions. You need not waste your time to appease them anymore Yuvraj! They have more approachable, earthier messiahs. Maya is there! Mulayam is there. Where does the 'panja' go now! Devoid of traditional low-caste votes, it might now become the ferocious agent of communalism in the country. Muslim appeasement fella! Congress might be 127 years old, but its penchant for swaying the conscience of masses still survives. Gandhi wanted its safe and respectful cremation. But it denied to be laid to rest. The mutations in it are strong enough to undo all the natural laws that ordain the death of all physical and biological phenomena through birth, youth, old age and death. Let us see what are the policies adopted by the oldie now!’ he was speaking to himself as if in delirium.

Almost nothing left of the Anna movement, and his individual and collective failure buzzing in his body, he clutched at anything that might put the ruling government in poor light. These were his leftovers after the storm had ineffectively passed. He felt he had been deprived of the last chance to highlight his unmarried life’s shinier worth in the society. People now knew him as somebody who knew all that is wrong with the government. He was heard telling the retired group of oldies in the park one morning:

 

You know why the UPA government has managed to survive the grisly tantrums of coalition politics? Simple: It has no democratic principle, ethos, morality and specific guidelines of political righteousness. The only principle it follows is just sticking to power at whatever cost. Be it allowing the ministers from the coalition partners to plunder the country through scams like the 2G Spectrum and Common Wealth Games or disgracing its own railway minister by rolling back the budgetary provisions just after the railway budget, the UPA just sticks to power like a dirty fly in bazaar hallucinated by the saccharine aura of cheap sweetmeats. And now they eat their cake and have it as well.

He had started to believe that the world ended where his opinions ended. He smelt a rat now in whatever went wrong anywhere, even beyond the Indian shores. And definitely the UPA must have done something wrong to make things go wrong. When you target your enemy by default you come across revolutionary insights, so did he. The other day, while Anna relaxed in his native village, Jan Lokpal Bill safely neutralised through political posturing, he was heard venting out his frustration to his younger charlatans in the NGO:

It is no secret to what extent the top-boss in India helped the Sri Lankan army to wipe out the culprit Prabhakaran. It was a sweet revenge--and may be justifiably so given the sanctimony of human relationships and the cause of justice for the victim. But now that very action is condemned at the UNHRC meeting to again appease the viruses of coalition politics. India has condemned the military action and the violation of human rights in the events leading to the decimation of Prabhakaran who was eagerly following the polling scenario in India while bombs (many of them sent as avenging gifts from the bigger neighbour) burst around him. The gorilla leader was hoping for a government change in India and hence the possible lessening of heat from the Indian side. But fate had decided otherwise. While the LTTE leader awaited the declaration of Indian parliamentary results and the war zone came to be dangerously confined to bullet shot range around him, the UPA again came to power unexpectedly thus destroying all his hopes. It was a typical Hindi movie end. Well, you guys can just imagine why and how all this happened.

The infection of hate against the UPA government, and more particularly the Congress, caught him with such force that his diseased judgements found him accursingly hateful of the whole political class. India definitely was at the forefront of a revolutionary change for the better. He had started to believe that there will be a political purge, the strong and mighty nexus involving criminal-businessman-politicians will be pushed off the centre stage and the common man will take the lead. But as the spring was eaten by the swift hot swirls of the building up heat, the summers saw the movement lying in the lurch. However there was still hope left. Arvind Kejriwal, one of Anna’s lieutenants, was pushing up heat against the system. It again fuelled his passion to see a freer India in the independent India. The masses like him looked forward to another unselfish, totally patriotic star, a revolutionary, not a politician. As he watched Kejriwal slowly building a bit of confidence in his Jantar Mantar protests, his commonmanship caught the mass fancy. Kejriwal wore half-sleeved common man shirt, had the most common next door face, and the pitch in his speeches was like somebody from the mohalla is speaking in your favour. During one of Arvind’s cough-interrupted speeches, he even cried aloud, ‘If Gandhism is a philosophy, not individual legacy, Arvind Kejriwal, then, is the modern Gandhi!

With his common man’s body, common man’s voice, common man’s face and common man’s shirt, the famed aam admi, Kejriwal seemed to reap the poor harvest that had been sown during the Jan Lokpal Bill movement. All this appeared far beyond politics. A cleansing endeavour. Wherever his new-age Gandhi would address the meetings and bring more proofs of politico-business nexus, he would be in the front ranks, the tri-colour draped on his head and his soul pining to liberate the mother earth from her own sons gone wrong. During the summers, monsoons and the autumn of 2012, Kejriwal kept on repeating the open secret that there is a cartel that has hijacked Indian democracy; it involves mighty politicians belonging to all the mainstream political parties, big business houses, senior officials and powerful antisocial elements; they complement each other and help each other in monopolizing things for mutual benefits and plunder the resources. Well, everybody knew it but Kejriwal challenged this criminal nexus with proofs in press conferences. The new-age Gandhi made people understand why they stand marginalized and stigmatized like this.

He had become a Kejriwal bhakta, taking the common men’s messiah as the embodiment of selflessness on the path of pure deeds for the emancipation of the hijacked Indian democracy by the strong and the moneyed. At one of the tea stall debates, he was heard powerfully espousing the Kejriwal cause:

All the thieves have started barking against him because he is their common enemy. Everybody knows how people like Mr Ambani control top ministries in India. And when Kejriwal shows fearlessness and puts them in dock they go for witch-hunting. Media is also controlled by these big economic and political tycoons. So the journalists are also leaving no stone unturned in demeaning this new Gandhi fighting for the little freedoms that have been denied to the common man of India. Hope people have their brains with them and won't be influenced by the propaganda organized by the exploiters.

In one of his fiercely revolting outbursts, he even summarized: ‘Rebels are in the Chambal Ravines; Dacoits are in the Parliament!’

Arvind Kejriwal was sued for insulting the Parliament. His blind supporter termed it as the tragedy of Indian jurisprudence that allows the big fishes to escape the net and get elected to the Parliament; then they rape the system but pay lip service to the Indian constitutionality by praising its loftiness.

Even the commonest of the common man’s face lit up a bit uncommonly as he got an opportunity to address a gathering in his home city at a function attended by the new hope of the masses. Sharing a stage with the common man’s saviour was the best dream he could ever dream of. When his term came, he spoke in the tone of a representative of the slaved humanity by the new colonists, the brown-skinned colonists.

...Their actions are, however, never interpreted to mean the insult of Parliament. Words ... mere words are sufficient to prove their credentials of clean citizens of India who keep up the honour of the Indian Parliament. On the other hand is our Kejriwal whose each and every action pays homage to the rule of law, justice and honesty in the country. But his true words make him a culprit under the Indian law. Nonetheless, Civil Society is a force to reckon with now. All the thugs, scoundrels and rich ruffians who always look forward to a rich political innings have to rethink their plans now. Already the buffoon of Bihar, the master swindler who has amassed billions over two decades, has been left to digest the fodder he has eaten so long. He befooled the hardworking Biharis by playacting the common man and plundered the mineral-rich state for two decades. Many villages in Bihar, meanwhile, just knew that the light meant the Sun and the lantern. There is no electricity in villages. 'It’s a city thing,' they accepted the hard reality in Lalu-accent. The system which allows such thuggery will accept you as long as you pay lip service and will condemn you the moment you open your mouth. But actions of Mr. Arvind Kejriwal are pure enough to give him a clean chit in the Lok Adalat. Why care about the Parliamentary fools! One more thing: the Parliament and the Constitution are for the people of India not the other way around. We gave the right to certain individuals to frame them as per our aspirations. Now if we the common masses are making noises for a change then why these plundering rascals are finding it unlawful? Just incorporate the common man's wishes. That’s all! Our Civil Society representatives hold the right to call a 'shit' a 'shit'. How long they will force us to call it 'sweetmeat'!

He firmly believed that it was a new freedom movement in the independent history of India, and Arvind Kejriwal the new-age totally patriotic, self-sacrificing, great-job-kicker messiah who will facilitate transition to a new-age democracy where there will be no corruption and misuse of higher machinery, politics will come out of the clutches of the money and muscle power, public servants will be accountable for their deeds, people will get the basics that they have not since independence (food, water, electricity and education) and many more common things that fulfil the dreams of a common man. His belief in all these little dreams and his consequent followship of the new-age great man continued to grow as Delhi got reprieve from the scorching summers by the monsoonal fury with its own share of different type of woes, as rainy season held out its periodical baton to the autumn leading to the great festival line with the start of the winters in November. But then there was a roadblock to his dreams. His enthusiasm got punctured. The revolutionary spin-off of the Anna movement safely landed in the political castle that he was so long throwing pebbles at. In November, amid much bickering and dissent by Anna and his still surviving band of new-age social reformers, Arvind Kejriwal showed uncommon guts with his common man’s body and face. He formed the Aam Aadmi Party, the party of the common man, formulated to fulfil the common man’s dreams. Well, it is open secret how much of commonality you are left with once you become a registered politician. He knew it, the activist of our tale. He felt duped. His last dream to be a part of the real change in the country lay shattered. The AAP was to be just any other party he knew, he had no doubts. As the coming times would tell, on the political stage, in the games of maligning and mud-slinging and secretive manipulations, AAP’s common man’s face would not remain as common as they claimed, it will be the face of any other party, having the same characters in it like any other party.

His dreams shattered, he stayed at home these days. He had left the rope that would have taken him to a bit higher in the sky fetching him his little bit of acclaim born of selfless service for the common cause. It took him months to realise that his life was far more purposeful in his little world of little deeds, the pure-hearted steps of feeding a cat, dog, cow and beggar; the genuinely reformative acts of sponsoring the education of a poor child; the little-little charities to the needy ones. These might not fetch him media headlines, but these will reward him with smile and genuine affection in the eyes of both the obliged animal and the impoverished human he did a favour to.     

The Pickle Slice in a Stale History Book

Was our freedom movement as free as we think it to be? He had thought along these lines many times. As a lecturer in history his soul would feel the prick of these off-beat ideas about the most important event in modern Indian history: the Indian freedom movement. But then his spirit was always shackled by the carefully crafted history, the subject, with its list of personalities who shaped the destiny of the country during the struggle. He had given countless lectures, telling the same bits of facts to changing batches, but the subject and its players never changed. While he told them the conventional bits of history, there were nagging bits that revolted inside him, tugging at his conscience that as a teacher he has to expose the students, even as a historian, to a new angle of thinking, to a new perspective, not to misguide the students, but to guide them to a path, where competent liberty of thought and opinions took one to unchartered heights of creativity and interesting unfolding of destinies, to envision new paths, to dream afresh, to explore more.

Unfortunately his subject was almost stagnant. The India of his teaching days was changing fast, but it was doing it in a common way, almost uneventfully, so the history books ended with tomes of theories and opinions about the freedom struggle and concluded the post-independence decades in just a little summary having development statistics and majorly wars with Pakistan and China. During his three decades of teaching career, he thought he just did a rote repetition of the same things. He himself changed, the types and calibres of the students changed, he even earned more under the revised pay scale under the new pay commission, even India changed to have more literate people and the resurgent more-moneyed middle class, but the history books were almost the same that he taught when he started his career.

It was his farewell lecture today, the conclusion of an innings. Instead of spending it in celebratory bonhomie with the staff, colleagues and students, he decided to put out his thoughts today. There was hardly any chance of being misinterpreted on this final day, at the most it would be dubbed as an emotion-laced farewell speech, more from the heart, and less of a mindful academic talk. To the mixed gathering of the staff, colleagues and students, he tried to speak as a history teacher, just this last time. He took them to be the biggest class he ever had and spoke with firm academic conviction, giving a free leeway to the off-beat historical hatchlings that had always zoomed with subtle force in him. Today he was telling his own history, entitling himself to have his own judgments born of the historical sense of three decades after repeatedly reading the famed historical lines, almost etched in stone to be meant to be the absolutist version of reality. To him history meant beyond the question-answer routine to get maximum marks by writing the expected answers. After giving a good brief about the events that sound important to our independent struggle, he was heard telling the audience now getting a totally new dose of historical pill:  

The colonists who had the power and efficiency to rule and exploit the lands thousands of miles away from their homes cannot be supposed not to possess anything about the exit strategies. With the beginning of the 20th century, it was written on the wall that the coming decades of the century will see the cascading effects of freedom movements. As great managers they started planning exit strategies. This strategy was meant to minimize the losses at their end and leaving the least ill-will. So amidst all the freedom movements that were naturally evolving, they facilitated the platforms that best suited their interests in the post-independence scenario. They were ruthless against the true nationalists who were branded as terrorists. They were wiped out literally. Thousands were sent to Kala Pani in India in this context. Now do you understand why Bhagat Singh was allowed to be hanged? Why was Subhas Chander Bose kicked out of the mainstream freedom movement even though his confidante was legitimately elected Congress president? Why more nationalistic sounding Congressites like Sardar Patel remained in the shadow of Nehru? Simple fact is that the Britishers were cleverly facilitating a Western-educated class of leaders who were 75 percent Westerners and would be the safest options during the critical decades before and after the Independence. It was a well-managed transfer of power. It was a well-managed first ring of Western-educated leadership that did not allow the real black, native nationalists of India to take the hot seat of the freedom movement and the chair after independence. Just see the decades before independence and you will realize the great undercurrent of British in particular (and Western in general) facilitation profitably flowing under the so called native black river of independence.

He was serving a differently-tasting slice of history. The pickled history, tastier, not so stale. It appeared the glamorised version of the stale history lessons. He was retiring on 31^st of March. The audience was clapping vigorously. The disastrous second innings of the UPA government had shown what it means to run a coalition government, how different political parties can be kept quiet just to retain their support, how public offices can be allowed to be blatantly misused to appease the ruffled feathers in coalition partners. Anna and team were voicing the mass angst against Sonia’s proxy rule, the office of the Prime Minister had lost all dignity as media buzzed with unending jokes about the puppet prime minister. Parliamentary elections were a couple of years away.

His intents and intentions were now carrying him to be an off-track historian. His head was throbbing with revolt against the stale history books that he had taught in rote repetition under the compulsion of bread and butter:

I draw a certain constitutional right—A logical and self-derived right of an educated Indian to reinterpret Indian history within logical limits. I just do the same and do not mean anything derogatory to the characters who as per conventional interpretations managed to fetch the centre-stage in the Indian freedom movement. Definitely, the Britishers had far more control over Congress affairs than average Indian believes because for him it symbolises the very epitome of human urge for freedom. But could it be possible that the Congress leadership in pre-independent India was well controlled by the Britishers with an acceptance that since ultimately they have to go out of this country, it is best to have a buffer zone of leadership drawn from English-educated, foreign-returned gentry who will both save them from a revolutionary outpour as well as provide a controlled leadership to the ignorant Indian masses. Beginning with the first decade of 20th century, revolutionary terrorism was becoming a force to reckon with. Lok Manya Tilak was proudly claiming, 'Swarajya is my birth right!' Then the First World War came. The Britishers were just not in a position to afford non-cooperation at the Indian front. See Mahatma Gandhi arrived swiftly on the scene and very soon all questions of Indian cooperation in British war efforts were settled. In a short span of time Indian soldiers were fighting at the North African front. The Britishers had scores of reasons for facilitating Gandhi-Nehru as they had for brutally suppressing and exterminating heroes like Bhagat Singh and sidelining Subhash Chander Bose. The prevailing philosophy of non-violence during the freedom movement was more helpful to the Britishers in every sense of the term. The ideal just minimized the chances of a popular upsurge (of the 1857 kind) against the White regime. This ideology however failed in stopping the bloodshed among the Indians. See the farce: Two million Indians died among themselves and the casualties to the outgoing regime were negligent (almost non-existent)! It was a smart move. Analyse the sprouts of those seeds of Western facilitation sown during those times and you will see the Colonial strains still blossoming in the skewed political stream of so called ‘Free India’.

Well, he might have been within his rights. After all in a democracy we have the freedom of thought and expression within the limits of decency. People seemed to listen to him with casual attention, the kind that is apparently serious at this moment but will go off the moment he stopped speaking. The conditioning of minds over the decades is too strong to be rubbed off to think differently by such mini-storms. All in all these are the storm-in-the-tea-cup type outpours, but if these give solace and succour to a ruffled soul then what is wrong with the audience allowing it to be spoken out in rapt attention with a serious expression. The students cannot afford to revise their syllabus to facilitate the out-going teacher’s opinions. They will fail if they do it. These things serve well only at the level of debates and arguments. Everybody seemed to know it.

Among the farewell applauds, one of his critical colleagues was saying in his friend’s ears, ‘It’s a political speech. Bullshit, why the hell he never spoke like that all these years. He is preparing a political stage. He will definitely join the BJP, I bet!’

Legitimate Tears

When your dreams lie shattered around you, do not cry. If you do that you do injustice in more than one sense of the term. One simple mathematical fact: Shedding tears would not help anyway. Understood that there are scattered pieces of the diamonds you had been working on. Now they are broken, shattered and may cut through flesh if you just close your eyes and prefer to cry. Kids have a copyright over crying and rightly so. We elders can spare this copyright infringement. Just look around the dashed diamonds, your so called broken dreams. Just see the glimmer in still shapely left out pieces. The dream is the soul; it just cannot die if some hammer momentarily dislodges its outer shape. No hammer in the world has the luck to kiss the soul of your dream. It’s always safe. That’s its fate. Simply. Plainly. Why cry if the thing has not died yet. If you do, it’s just like mourning the death of someone who is still alive. I think we can simply avoid this irrational act. Broken shards of your dreams are, let us say, the blood-thirsty and hard chisels. They can help you in cutting through such mighty rocks as you could have never imagined. So it is simply better to cut bigger rocks for larger prospects instead of allowing the pieces to cut through your physical and mental selves.

She was a motivational speaker. She had delivered the above speech and the likes many a time to gather her share of conference money and acclaim. Tired employees told her it seems to give them a new direction and meaning in life. Her exquisitely polished manner, sleek hair, business suit, fragrant classy perfumes and radiant smile made her look a perfect personification of whatever she spoke: success and succour. But make-believe polished exteriors apart, all of us carry naked bits of truth stuck up to our nudity, below the outer layer, the invisible, private, inaudible world, that rarely shows its face even in the privacy of the bathroom because we get so habituated to see ourselves like others see in our public avatar.

The CEO of the company that had organized that motivational retreat at a sea-side resort in Goa was beaming with pleasure, promiscuity and her effeminate proximity, ‘You are a diva, you can put life even in a dead body. What powerful words, so uplifting!’ He was drunk and considered it his right to flirt with the one who had been hired to pump motivation in those servile souls who cringed before him. With a polite thanks and a still more formal smile she backed away from the famed gamer with the opposite sex.

It was a world of hungry males around her. She was in her late thirties but could beat any younger employee in feminine radiance. Finding the head lion away, a junior manager rushed to grab his chance, ‘My God what speech you deliver! I never thought life will become so meaningful after all the messed up projects in the office and still messier situation at home!’ He seemed ready to kiss her hand. She was having just a lime breezer, very well in control of herself, and very felinely warded him off. Then there were many more eager souls approaching her, coming to congratulate apparently, but with the real intention of impressing her to take her to bed. That of course is the invisible, almost inevitable, buried under the clothing and good gracious mannerisms, the real, naked basic, primal instinct of the educated males to come wooing an equally educated female.

All of them seemed to sense their chances with her. She was famous enough in the corporate world to lay bare bits and pieces of her personal life on the open platform of gossips and desirous gesticulations. She was a single mother. Her daughter safely put in a boarding school in Mussoorie hills. Whenever the guilty pangs of depriving a girl from the grooming love and affection of her mother would stalk her, questioning her popular march in leadership and management motivating talks, she looked at the bank statements, the account details of hundreds of thousands she siphoned off to the reputed school’s account towards her daughters education and boarding fees. An inner voice would tell her that she might fail as a mother. But then the world around was all praise for her, both as a person and as a professional. She had all the reasons to believe herself to be exactly what others told her to suit their purposes and motives.   

Her husband had dubbed her too ambitious. An Indian man prefers a docile and manageable wife playing slightly subordinate role to his patriarchy however talented she might be. ‘You are too self-centred and ambitious to adjust to the smaller confines of domesticity,’ he had shouted during their last days together. Those words pinch her many times. She recalls these many a time while her audience is applauding her inspirational oratory. From the broken shards of her broken marriage she definitely carved out her destiny. To prove the equal right of her matriarchal spirit, she took up the responsibility of raising her daughter singlehandedly.  But was it enough?

The biggest challenge for a beautiful, successful, single, middle-aged woman is to pick out the right man to go into bed with out of every Tom, Dick and Harry falling at her feet. She has allowed two men to follow her into the bed after her marriage broke. Both were married, of equal stature, and talked intelligently, approached her with utmost care and as it usually happens after enjoying the fruits of their disillusionment had gone back to their wives and families. Sometime she felt like they just used her body. So she was very careful now about men. A void was but building up in her because at some stage you need a partner and especially when you and others consider yourself to be a success story.

In the resort’s party hall, the spirits and souls were now getting more intoxicated. Louder talks, stretched out phrases, peppier dance numbers and more flirtatious deeds. Caught in the whirl of the times, she had graduated to some cocktail rounds from the earlier cautious breezer and the world around appeared no longer needing any type of inspiration. A perfect world, drowned in its booze-born, slow-paced aura. She pined for space, tranquillity and shelter in a caring man’s arms. She came out of the party hall, walked over the sprawling lawns to exit through the sea-fronted gate to walk with stumbling steps to the sea calling through its roar across the beach. Walking through the waves kissing her feet, she felt a hand on her shoulder. The lecherous CEO was following her. He knew about those other two company heads and very well thought he could be the third. It was dark, she was alone, the sea roaring to add to his surging passions, so no polished mannerisms required to reach a woman. On top of that he was drunk, and knew she was drunk also. As a successful hunter he knew from his experience that straightforward approach clicked many a time. He spun her around and before she could react or think anything his lips were on hers. She had not been touched by a man in this raw manner since almost six months. Tipsy and beyond all thoughts and reflections she found herself helplessly melting under his rapacious surge. He was on her now. All wet on the sand she was just about to give in if not for the momentary steamer light that went piercing through her eyes. ‘Move out and climb however high, you but will be a convenient game for the successful men around you,’ her aggrieved husband had shouted when they had parted finally. During those times he had looked less attractive, almost unsuccessful and plainly jealous to her. In revulsion she pushed the predator away. Used all the physical force that all her inspiring words would allow her to muster up. With a wounded self, she beat his scared mass like anything. His hunting demeanour going wrong, he just left, ran away rather and would not tell anybody about it.

She was lying on the wet sand missing her daughter by her side. She missed a genuinely caring male hand on hers. She could afford to cry in the dark inaudibly by the noisy sea waves. It will help her in keeping herself as presentable as she was during the glorious day. She allowed her naked real tit bits to lay bare their identity in full nudity. She cried. She still remembered what she had spoken about during the day.        

A Busful of a Sky

Roop Lal is in his early thirties, comes from a village in Haryana, has graduation to his credit, belongs to the scheduled caste and thus the reserved category and hence should have been into a government job, but he isn’t because the famed political weapon of job reservation helps only those whose fathers and grandfathers have been lucky to get it. In a rare outburst of his otherwise genteel demeanour he did even lash out judgementally, ‘Why don’t they limit the reservation facility to just first generational claimants so that more and more poor dalit families get covered leaving out the rich kids of richer dalit parents who climbed the reservation ladder to give good education to their children’ But then it might do good to many poor dalit families, it however isn’t politically suitable to most of the parties in India. And also who cares about the opinion of a common man. India on a daily basis has trillions of such valid opinions. Only the politically effective ones survive. So his opinion having gone down a filthy drain, Roop Lal has hitched a job ride on the Delhi State Transport’s bus as an adhoc conductor, the mammoth public transport carrier in the national capital having decided to work as per the profiteering private sector by enrolling temporary workers on its payroll, on strict private sector rules of miserly payment counted on the basis of hours spent on the crowded bus floor. In this manner you escape the problem of overstaffed, nonperforming, overpaid, long-term parasitic employees and provide at least employment to a larger section of the society. Well, it seemed to be the only justification. Further, it is very convenient to delist and push out the temporary employees as the changing winds would require. 

 

Each morning he arrives in Delhi, travelling in the packed passenger trains full of cackling commuters, who travel on the same path, day after day, months after months, years after years, playing the same game of cards, discussing the same politics till some member of the group goes missing either on account of retirement, or when somebody dies. He also has been accepted by one such group of card-gamesters who put tiny sums on stake, grab the same seats in a corner in the same compartment. So lost in the dead serious game of cards he reaches Delhi. Salutes Delhi! This is his overpowering emotion. He likes Delhi because it gives him bread and butter otherwise his nagging wife would have definitely eaten his soul. She is too much of a fee-fawing feminine version of a monster, and he a wee bit gentle to weather the storm on a daily basis, so he feels more than obliged to the DTC and Delhi that these keep him busy in their clattering noise far away from his ranting, rampaging wife.

The Delhi around him is two-eyed. Two cosmically bulging eyes having different visions, different dreams, different destinations. One of its pan-shots swankily zooms on the glizz-and-glamour of the resurgent India. Whether it is the right-eye pan-shot or the left-eye, it is not possible to tell. The eye's flash-shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. It’s a grizzled, murky screen having classic comedies and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis. It’s the first Monday in the second week of December, the festival of Muhharram to be precise, and another chilly fresh day for Roop Lal who has a reason to smile today because his wife just completed weaving the woollen jersey that she had been working upon for almost couple of months during her non-ranting time. So in lieu of so many of his sweetmeats that he regularly fetched for her as a bribe to stop her mouth from ranting for some time and relish the sugary melt in her mouth. He is looking a bit smarter in his black and white patterned woollen jersey.

Many offices are closed on account of the Muhharram. It means a bit better luck for him for he can accidently drop some coin on the DTC bus floor and still left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. At least he could see through a radius of few feet around him. Great solace. The air too is not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deodorants from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations. When the manufacturer of these low-floored and environmentally friendly buses offered them to the DTC (along with the alleged ‘kickbacks per piece to the Sheila Dixit government’--the prevalent rumour embalinng truth, falsehood, judgement and frustrated opinions in the jib and jibe of meaningless, ineffective talk) the real cost of the vehicle was just meant to carry this type of load. The festival load. The holiday load. The once-in-a-time-load when people do not travel on account of holidays or some other emergency.

On this observable stage a 14-year-old man-kid jumbles into the finally justified interiors of the poor green line bus. Boy he is a man rather! Carries a pole that would tower above the poor bus if its vertical angularity is completed. He is holding it at an angle, slanted, his small hands manoeuvring it smartly and the camel is safely in the room, the roomful of a bus. The pole is the dancing axis of so many types of cheapest kid toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhood mushrooming in slums. All fellow-riders watch him in half amuse and half irritation. A few lampoons even laughed at the free show. Anyways, coming back to this character valiantly playing its part in the grizzly black and white ever-spooling movie. He rushes in after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the bus conductor about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. Roop Lal’s protest is too feeble, the boy’s resolve to cling onto the footholds in Delhi is too strong. Even their voices have starkly different pitches: the bus conductor speaks in slow-paced affably roughened notes; the boy-cum-manly-resolved passenger has a sabre-rattling tone. Left with no option, Roop Lal now fights for his bus-conducting right of asking for the ticket money.

Even here he has to fight a battle. It’s a bargain. The boy finally shows him a 10 rupee bill. Where do you go, tell me first, Room Lal tries to be tarter. The boy-entrepreneur is not sure, how can he be, his business might take him into any situation at any place. He doesn’t seem to have any destination in mind as well. His days in Delhi hawking the poor provisions take him to nameless destinations, the squares, the crossings, the T-points, the streets, the sidewalks. A bus ticket but takes one to a particular destination. The boy is thinking fast. He has to justify his bus-ride budget of 10 rupees. But the toy pole is too heavy, even more difficult to manage it within the confines of the bus. The effort is distracting him from being clever to dupe the conductor. Sensing it the conductor is regaining his lost confidence and finding law on his side is speaking even more sharply. The boy pretends to shuffle, and manage a stage show of fall-avoiding manoeuvres.

This self-earning-boy isn’t just a man in vocal resolve and glint in the eyes; he is the one in action as well. Roop Lal seems to paw this little mouse, and he the bullying cat, like the little mouse will plead for 10 rupees, so his voice now has even a bit of entertainment streak. The boy balances his load and himself against sudden brakes by the driver and without much effort takes out a 50 rupee bill from his pocket. He demands a DTC day-pass costing 40 rupees. Man-o-man! How much this kid earns to afford the pass? Anyways that is none of our concern like most of the Delhi things should not be. One fact is inescapable: the well-meant boy is well-prepared for the day. The way he has tied the muffler, the way his cheap jacket is buttoned up to the collar, the way the trousers well-fit his thin legs and the way well-cleaned shoes purchased from the road-side hawker, all these portend a good successful business plan. With his day-pass he is a legitimate passenger, throughout the day, in any green public transport to any destination. Possibly he has already spent almost the day’s profit in the bus ride, but that will keep him a legal bread earner for a day.

For the bus conductor the problems are never over even on a less-crowded holiday. One problem with the new DTC bus is that its door opens too invitingly with a welcoming whisper, as if it is specially inviting you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an Adivasi family now raids the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulks, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the black old lady draped in a big raggish blanket shouts. God knows how many of them there are! It is a collectively lampoonish unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabs the hand-rails overhead and tries gymnastics. One of its hands busts the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and the conductor shriek painfully. So many ragged kids carry their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dump the homeless spirit for a while. Their neighbours almost vomit. A slim woman carries a toddler on her shoulder, one infant in her lap and most probably another one inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shines from the short kurti she is wearing above the gracious folds of a dirty long skirt. It has become a thoroughfare. The conductor fights for tickets. They stand their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where are they going? Whole of the NCR is their destination. Going nowhere, still everywhere. It is just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with the conductor acquires serious colours. They have a resolve to keep occupying the bus for as long as possible. Roop Lal has is duty-bound to either legitimately extort money out of their torn pockets, or throw them out. If the ticket-checking squad catches so many ticketless passengers, he might very easily lose his temporary job. He fails to draw even a penny out of their pocket, so he now prays that they disembark at the earliest and for that he has to keep his fight on, so continues he with all his tongue’s might, continue they riding almost deaf-eared. To bring him luck, they just dump themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanish from the scene. Roop Lal exhales out a stormy breath of relaxation.

The bus conductor looks at the boy. The boy smiles back. The boy entrepreneur now appears the most civilized and well mannered one. He goes to the boy and helps in adjusting the pole suitably so that his balloons are safe. He takes out a 10 rupee note from his leather bag of collection and gives it to the boy. He will have to reimburse these 10 rupees from his salary. The boy takes it more as a friendly gesture, and less as charity. He disembarks near a very crowded square, looks back at him with a faint smile, and vanishes in the jostling crowd. The bus moves on.